


I Thought I Fought This War Alone

by iwouldclimbyoulikeabarricade



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Feelsy?, M/M, post-death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-12
Updated: 2014-01-19
Packaged: 2018-01-08 12:10:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1132496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iwouldclimbyoulikeabarricade/pseuds/iwouldclimbyoulikeabarricade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-death. Grantaire woke up, thinking, hoping, it was all a dream. Maybe it was, maybe they hadn't died and he'd go into the cafe and find them all there like always. But he knew that it wasn't. The world was empty besides for him, and he thought that maybe he'd gone to his own personal hell where he was alone, without him. But his personal hell was being alone, with him.<br/>Enjolras knew that they had all died and he hated himself for it. But the one person he believed didn't believe turned out to be the exact opposite, and their hopes start to rise.<br/>E/R</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It was strange, waking up. It hadn’t been something that Grantaire had been waiting for or expecting, to say the least. The last things he could remember were the screams, the cries, the sounds of the rifle’s rapid fire as they were triggered one by one by one, things falling to the floor and breaking. Actually, that was a lie. The last thing that Grantaire could remember was silence. The dead of silence in the cafe as he woke from a drunken stupor and realised, he knew, he understood. That everything was over. For a brief minute, second, year, Grantaire had that soaring hope that maybe that had all been a complete dream, that he would wake up from passing out on the floor in the middle of the cafe to everyone around him chuckling and laughing at him, calling him a complete idiot as they usually did.

But as much as he might have hoped that had been the case, he knew that it wasn’t so. He remembered the bodies of his comrades, boys who weren’t quite men who he had come to regard as his friends, laying scattered on the floor around the soldiers that had stormed and destroyed their barricade. He remembered pushing through them and stopping them killing his best friend. He remembered the darkness and the resounding silence that had been the thing to wake him, not the sounds of his friends dying. It sickened him to know that it had to be that, silence, to wake him, other than the sounds of the few people he actually cared about in this sick world dying.

He laughed, a harsh sound, ravaged by the years of alcoholism and drinking that had been steadily destroying his insides, a sound that echoed through the emptiness of whatever place he happened to be in now. It was funny, absolutely hilarious, wasn’t it? The fact that he had been the one to give the people around him mockeries, give them high lectures on how they were being completely idiotic and trying to change the world too fast, and who would remember them all when they fell? He had been firmly cynical of the entire idea, told himself that he would never get himself mixed up with that sort of idiocy, and the ironic thing was that he had. He had done exactly what they had done and died for a cause that wouldn’t even change part of the world in the small period of time that they were in. Grantaire hated that he knew more about the cruelties of the world than the whole group put together, but it was also something he prided himself on, more than he prided himself on anything else. It had been the thing to drive him into the depths of the alcohol that rarely gave his mind some separation from the horrors of the world, but it had also gave him the arguments to back himself up when he was telling them all how stupid they were being, what they were risking – their lives – for a cause that would come to... what?

“Nothing, that’s what it will come to,” he called out hoarsely, into the silence that surrounded him in a soft blanket, talking as if everyone were still alive and they were in one of their regular cafe meetings, with him being drunk somewhere around the back area and having Enjolras glaring at him from his place in the top spot. It was a scene that Grantaire wanted to be familiar with again, but with the cold bliss that enveloped him since he woke up being too painfully present, he knew that those scenes would never happen again, not in this day and age, and certainly not carried out by them, the students of Le Amis d’ABC. It was a sad thing to dwell on and with no alcohol apparent to stop him from doing so, Grantaire began to walk.

He didn’t know where he was going, except he just descended the stairs and outside the cafe to... well, it was just the familiar streets of Paris. Except they were empty, devoid of any soul that walked around like he did. He felt something wrench at his heart; what if this was Hell, for him? What if he was condemned to being alone forever, without anyone he truly cared for by his side? Even though he had ridiculed them and dismissed the other students, they had, at the end of the day, been his friends. And one of Grantaire’s greatest fears was being alone. That was why he surrounded himself with the others, that was why he was proud to call them his friends, because even if he wasn’t capable of living, believing, or dying, as he had been frequently told, he was capable of being there with them. And even though they hadn’t believed it, although Grantaire couldn’t give two hoots about believing in the revolution, he had been capable of one thing.

_“Grantaire,” he called. “Go and sleep your wine off somewhere else. This is a place for intoxication, but not for drunkenness. Don’t dishonour the barricade.”_

_“You know I believe in you.”_

_“Grantaire, you’re incapable of believing or thinking or willing or living or dying.”_

_“You’ll see,” said Grantaire gravely. “You’ll see.”_

Fury took him then, a flame of fury that sparked and then flared, and it was that anger that caused him to shout out, loudly and angrily, into the emptiness that he so hated. “I showed them, didn’t I, Apollo! I showed them that I believed! I _showed_ them that I thought! I _showed_ them that I had the will to do it! I showed them I could live! I showed them that I could _die_ , didn’t I Apollo!? I proved YOU wrong! I showed you that I _believed_! I showed you that I believe in _you_! I still do! Why could you not _see_ that?!”

It was a sound behind him that made him whirl around. It wasn’t a threatening sound, nor a pitiful sound of a child. It wasn’t even a whimper. It was a choking sound, one that sounded like someone getting their throat caught on talking with tears. And who was it going to be but Enjolras, standing there in the usual tidiness of the Paris streets when the stone wasn’t stained by the blood of young, angry men? Of course it was going to be that perfect man that Grantaire saw as Apollo.

“So you heard all of that, did you?” he said bitterly, his dark eyes filled with years of horror and scenes that no man should ever have to see boring into the sharp blue ones of the pale face of Enjolras. “Go ahead. Laugh at me. Tell me I’m stupid.”

He instead received a question that he hadn’t been expecting. “Why did you do it, Grantaire?”

A million answers travelled through his head at once. The revolution, because he was fed up of the world, because he had nothing left to lose, because he wasn’t going to let Enjolras die such a lonely and stupid and pointless death, because it was Enjolras, because Enjolras was the one man he really cared about in the world and he wasn’t prepared to let him go so easily –

“Revolution?”

And that was when he was tackled to the floor.


	2. Passion Colors Everything

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Grantaire and Enjolras sit on the roof of a church and talk.

“So it’s over, eh?”

They were sitting on a roof of a church, managing to get up there through the stairs through the tower, Grantaire holding onto the tiles for dear life in fear he would fall. He had never liked heights too much but this wasn’t as bad as it could have been. Enjolras seemed more at ease up there, even though his face was hard, saddened by the loss that he knew he had suffered. Grantaire knew that Enjolras was beating himself up for letting everyone die, even though all of them were prepared for it. Probably not mass slaughter in the way that they had been, but they were all prepared. It was like the young soldier that he had killed. Guilt had raced Enjolras for that, even as he tried to justify it. They all knew that they couldn’t justify it; at the end of the day, Enjolras had killed somebody. He couldn’t take that back.

Grantaire shrugged. “For us, it’s over. For the rest, it’s over. For France... I don’t think so, no. More people will rise up again, it’s the only thing that makes sense.” He laughed suddenly then; chuckling with mirth that wasn’t often heard. “Goddamn, I need a drink. I’m starting to sound like a damn philosopher.” His fingers tapped against the roof of the holy building incessantly. Grantaire didn’t know what was going on, not really. Why they were here, what the purpose was. Where was everyone else? Where was Joly, Feuilly, Bahorel, Combeferre, Courfeyrac? Young Gavroche, the little squirt that Grantaire had become fond of despite himself? Where were they all? Why did Grantaire have to be here, dealing with the emotions that he never wanted to embrace?

It was odd, the way he looked at Enjolras now. Grantaire wished that he had some kind of artist’s utensils, something that he could use to draw the young man sitting next to him at that moment. The soft lines of Enjolras’ almost feminine face, the curls of his hair. Hell, he could even add some sparkles for it from the way that the sun hit his silhouette. But as Grantaire watched Enjolras considering what he had said, he had to wonder; was he the one staying optimistic while Enjolras was the one who was giving up? It didn’t make sense anymore, not after all that they had been through. After they had died, Grantaire didn’t expect Enjolras to be like this.

“Oi,” Grantaire said, nudging Enjolras gently – oh God, he was still in that red coat that he always wore, couldn’t he just have been in something normal for once – with an almost reassuring smile. “You can’t give up just yet, you idiot. Not after all the crap you put us through with your sleepless nights planning and all those bloody speeches. How many of them did I have to sit through? That was torture, you know. Why did you have to put me through that, of all things?” He was being an idiot, trying to invoke some sort of smile from the other male, but he got nothing.

“They’re all dead, Grantaire. Can’t you see that?”

That was the answer that came: soft, whispered, almost a half-sob. Part of Grantaire wanted to shove him away and get off the roof as fast as possible, but another part of him just wanted to wrap him into a hug. Grantaire hadn’t hugged anybody for a long time, he never found the need or want to. At least, he’d never found that until round about now. His fingers clenched together, nails biting into his palms as he considered Enjolras’ own answer. He didn’t want to admit it, but now, when he finally thought about it for real, they were all dead. They were all dead. Dead. Dead, dead, dead, losses of life that didn’t deserve to be lost. They were all young and free, they were young and rash, they were young and they were all dreamers. It was horrible to think of it, and yet that was all he could do. He lifted himself up, holding onto the spire of the church, before looking down at Enjolras with an almost softened look.

“That’s right. They’re all dead. Like I said we would be. We’re all dead men now, and there’s nothing we can do about it. We’re all dead men. That was how it was always going to end, you bloody idiot. We were all going to die, just like I said we would. Do our lives mean anything at all? That’s a question we’re never going to be able to answer, because we’ll never find out. All we can do is wait and see, wait to see what will happen in France now. Whether the people will take what we did into their stride – oh, I’m sorry, what _you_ did,” he laughed, coughing a little as he did so. “You did it all, Apollo. You’re the wonderful leader of the revolution. I’m just the dead weight that no one’s going to remember.” The words started to come tumbling out of his mouth again; today he just couldn’t seem to keep his mouth shut from letting everything he had ever thought come pouring out. “ _You’re_ the one I stayed there for, you beautiful, ethereal idiot. _You’re_ the one I believed in, not the revolution. I didn’t believe for one damn minute that it would work. I said what I did with the hope that you would actually see sense and stop it, because I _knew_ you were going to die. Why else would I stand beside you at the end? I wasn’t going to stay alive when you weren’t around. What was I going to live for, then? Everything just attached to you, because I couldn’t leave you alone, could I? I was an annoying bastard, I know. But at the end of the day, look at us now. Dead men. Dead men, with one of them fallen for the other.”

He chewed his lip, before sliding down to the edge of the church and considering whether he could jump down. “Happy?” he finally asked bitterly.


	3. Carnival of Rust

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which arguments are had and some things are finally out in the open.

Grantaire hadn’t expected an answer. The entire thing was wholly one sided and either way, ‘happy?’ was _always_ a rhetorical question. He had expected silence so that he could get away from the rood and end the conversation there and then. But he had received an answer and that meant he was trapped under the torturous gaze of Enjolras for longer. Grantaire cursed his inability to retain the things he never wanted to say when he was angry, because as much as he loved taunting Enjolras for a reaction, that was not something he had ever wanted to use. Even though it was the truth, it spilled out the darkness that gathered around his being.

“No, Grantaire.” His voice sounded more broken than he had ever heard it before. The sound of a man who had been defeated. “No, I’m not happy. It was that belief that got you killed too. The belief that got everyone else killed. That’s going to be on my conscience forever.” Before Grantaire could answer him, Enjolras had stood and clambered off of the church roof, red coat billowing behind him as the air lifted it. He landed and started to walk away. Grantaire still stood there dumbly, on the roof, staring after him, eyes dark, sad, and angry. He couldn’t do anything right, clearly. His attempt at giving Enjolras the knowledge that the cynic had always stood behind him had failed miserably and completely.

As Enjolras walked, he scuffed his feet against the floor a little. Why now? Why now, of all times, was Grantaire trying to keep his spirits up? Now, when the revolution had failed and cost the lives of his closest, his only friends? Grantaire had never seemed to have any faith before, any indication of believing – no. No, he had said it before. Those four words. I believe in you. The one thing the sceptic had believed in had been him, the golden leader of the student revolution. Enjolras stopped and ran a hand through his hair, curls catching on pale fingers as he did so. The entire thing made no sense to him. Why would Grantaire say things like he had, do what he did? Considering his attitude, the things he usually said, why would it all change now? Unless...

Inside him, his heart leapt before he quickly pushed the feeling down. Of course that wouldn’t be the case, and Enjolras _himself_ certainly didn’t feel that way. Never. Enjolras shook his head, although it already felt light and dizzy from the thoughts that were spiralling through his brain, and carried on walking. Even when he heard his name being called from the distance by the other man, he didn’t stop. Enjolras had, ultimately, given up. He didn’t want to be put through the pain that Grantaire was putting him through again. Enjolras didn’t realise that the action was the same for the dark haired cynic, that Enjolras was the very reason that Grantaire still lived. That Enjolras was the only thing that Grantaire could live and die for without regret.

_“Enjolras!”_

The shout finally came, sharp, loud, and desperate, reaching Enjolras’ ears with a startling closeness. He turned, bright eyes wide and confused, only to have his hand taken – so familiar to a time before – and a pressure crashing into his lips. Those lips that, a short time before, had only bestowed two kisses in his short lifetime. Instead of pushing himself away like he always expected himself to do, Enjolras found himself relaxing into it, his soft hand grasping the rough, hardened one tightly. The pressure lifted away and those sharp blue eyes looked straight into the dark ones that were so characteristic of Grantaire, silence passing between them but the words that needed to be said already being spoken for. The two of them stood there, hands still entwined, for what seemed like an eternity before one of them spoke.

“Do you understand now, Apollo?”

Grantaire gazed upon the man he believed was from descended from angels, a last, desperate plea forcing him into drastic measures. Grantaire hadn’t wanted it to come to this. He would have been comfortable with never telling him and just _dying_ , but they hadn’t just died, had they? They were here, in some above – Earth place where the only inhabitants were them at the time. Grantaire had always been good at keeping his secrets safe, in life, but now, when it was just him and his Apollo, all of that seemed to have gone straight out of the window. The man was impossible. And Grantaire adored him.

He felt nails digging into his palm and a second too late Grantaire realised that they weren’t his own. He felt the tremors coming through the body of the blonde man and the shakes that almost set Grantaire off. His breath stopped. What had he done? He’d screwed up again, hadn’t he? His free hand curled up into a fist, his own nails digging into his own palm and if they had been long enough and not bitten down to stumps, he would have drawn blood. He went to draw his hand away but still it was grasped onto tightly, tighter than before, and before Grantaire could even open his lips to apologise arms were thrown around his neck and the breath knocked out of him. Sobbing. Grantaire’s eyes widened in shock. Enjolras was _crying_. How? What? When did this ever happen? What had he _done_?

“Apollo?” he whispered, his hands creeping up the other’s back and holding him into himself, unbelieving that this was actually happening. “Apollo, I’m sorry, I didn’t... why are you crying?” Something was mumbled into his shoulder, and Grantaire took the other’s shoulders gently and held him out in front of him, the usually rough and hardened man unusually gentle. “Enjolras, what did I do?”

Tears were still spilling down the other’s cheeks as he swallowed and managed to get the words out. “You did everything, R. Just... everything. I didn’t believe it, but you did.... you believed, you really believed, R.” Grantaire stared at him in utter shock and then started to laugh, even though it was turned rough by alcohol it held mirth for once in a million years. Grantaire took Enjolras’ hands and kissed his forehead again, no longer afraid.

“Of course I believed.”


End file.
